By Stephen Yeboah*
A
frica sits on vast resources. Of greater potential than
its extractive resources, like oil, diamond, gold, or
cobalt, is its population bulge.
By 2030, it is projected that Africa will have 1.7 billion
people whose combined consumer and business spending is
expected to reach $6.7 trillion. This demographic dividend – if
properly harnessed – offers the continent an incredible oppor-
tunity to build a strong labour-intensive manufacturing base.
Africa has the fastest-growing youth population in the
world; with 60 percent of its population under the age of 24.
A robust manufacturing sector could absorb this youth bulge
with good jobs while injecting some much-needed diversity
into agriculture-reliant African economies.
But on the fl ipside of this enormous opportunity, the region
is heavily under-represented in global value chains (GVCs).
GVC comprise all the people and activities involved in the
production of a good or service and its global level supply,
distribution and post-sales activities. GVCs are a defi ning
element of contemporary globalisation, allowing countries
to participate in global trade by specialising in a specifi c
part of the supply chain in which they are most competitive.
But the question is: why are African countries absent from
the GVC game? And what role can COMESA play? Africa
faces a host of obstacles in developing the competitive edge
needed for entering into GVCs. At the heart of the challenge
34 • COMESA • 2018
is the need for a coordinated, common trade policy and well-
established institutions.
Trade policies and Africa’s GVC potential
Throughout the experiences of Europe, North America and
Asia, it is known that building regional value chains (RVCs)
is a key step towards participation in GVCs by increasing the
market for exports and imports.
But intra-African trade is low at just 9 percent, compared
to Asia (54 percent) and Latin America (18 percent). In a
recent study, the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) estimates that on an average, only
6 percent of the value-added exports to African countries are
sourced from within the region.
There are variations across the different regional blocs.
In the Economic Community of Central African States
(ECCAS), for example, only 3.6 percent of imports were
sourced from within in 2016. In the COMESA, 10.5